About

My research focuses on animal politics (particularly its intersection with animal law), the politics of advocacy and representation, and the role of political institutions in promoting liberal democratic values.

My first book project, entitled “Multispecies Legality: Interests, Personhood, and the Basis of Legal Inclusion” looks at the place of animals in the legal system and provides an interests-based model of legal inclusion that, I argue, will improve the legal protections available to all animals, whether non-human or human. The book is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.

I am currently a Visiting Researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law, where I will be working two projects: one that critiques the “rights of nature” movement as a basis for animals’ legal rights, and another that analyses the outcomes of prosecutions under animal welfare laws in Australia.

In my role as a post-doctoral Research Fellow with the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, I am engaged in a number of collaborative projects with colleagues from Crawford and beyond. This includes research on story-telling in the context of election campaigns, Australians’ views on care work, and Australians’ views on the role of local governments. I am also on the teaching team for POGO8403 Cases in Contemporary Public Policy, a core course in Crawford’s Master of Public Policy, and will soon be convening POGO8021 Public Sector Ethics.

In December 2022, I graduated with a PhD from the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. On my thesis panel, I was privileged to have Professor Keith Dowding (ANU), Dr. Alexandra Oprea (SUNY - Buffalo), and Professor Christian Barry (ANU). Prior to beginning my PhD, I completed a BSc (Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology; Biological Anthropology) at the ANU, and before that, a BA (Politics; Philosophy) at the University of Adelaide.

In addition to my work at the ANU, I currently serve as a Member of the Australian Capital Territory Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (AWAC), which is the body legislatively tasked with updating the Territory’s animal welfare codes of practice and providing advice to the relevant Minister on emerging issues in animal welfare.

I also volunteer with the Animal Defenders Office, a Canberra-based, nationally accredited community legal centre that focuses on issues in animal law (including those impacting on animal advocates), and which engages regularly in community outreach activities.

Outside of research and teaching, I enjoy reading, looking for ever more reading material in bookstores, riding my bike, crafts involving needles and hooks, taking pictures of birds (a number of which you can see on this website), and trying to figure out which bird it was that I just took a photo of.